


good

by bog gremlin (tomatocages)



Series: nonsexual intimacy prompts [8]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Episode: s02e08 The Blade of Marmora, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:41:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25487911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomatocages/pseuds/bog%20gremlin
Summary: After completing the Trails at the Blade of Marmora base, Keith has trouble sleeping. He didn't intend for Shiro to notice.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: nonsexual intimacy prompts [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838314
Comments: 7
Kudos: 98





	good

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kika988](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kika988/gifts).



> Nonsexual intimacy prompt: sleeping together ([originally posted on twitter 7/16/20](https://twitter.com/boggremlin/status/1283925294966018054))
> 
> This pieces has been expanded from its original version

  
when my mother said,  
_They don’t love you like I love you_ ,

she meant,  
_Natalie, that doesn’t mean_  
_you aren’t good_.

\- [_They don't love you like I love you_](https://poets.org/poem/they-dont-love-you-i-love-you), Natalie Diaz

\---

Keith wakes with a start, rolling from his side to his feet and immediately regretting it. Keith’s been sleeping on the floor outside of Shiro’s door ever since they came back from the Blade’s hidden base.  Keith hadn’t meant to fall asleep. 

The noise that disturbed him was the sound of the door opening: nothing more, nothing less. 

Shiro stands tall above him, his face made opaque by the shadows, and the angle, and the way Keith hasn’t stopped hunching to guard against pulling the wound across his shoulder. It shouldn’t be surprising to see Shiro at all, in the doorway to Shiro’s own room, in the middle of the night. 

Here’s the thing: Shiro wasn’t in his room to begin with. 

Keith knows that Shiro patrols the castleship at night. That’s not a secret, it’s just how things are. Shiro has an edginess that’s stuck under his skin, a restlessness that he can’t shake. Keith understands — it can’t be much different from how Keith felt when he was roaming the caves in the desert, hunting for something. Distracting himself from everything else. 

Keith has less of a purpose here and now, and he doesn’t have the luxury of pacing the halls of the ship. He thinks that Allura might be watching him, that she’s set her mice to follow his every move, and the others aren’t much better. Keith is afraid to make a move, these days. He hasn’t been afraid like this in a long time, and he’d forgotten the soul-sick horror of it, the need to find somewhere to shelter in place. He figured the doorway was the one place he could hide and where Shiro wouldn’t think to look for him. (Shiro is the only person on this ship who would think to look for him. Red doesn't count; she's in his head.)

And yet.

“There you are,” Shiro says. He doesn’t sound gentle, nor does he sound harsh; he’s stating a fact. Keith is here, as though he’s a stray Shiro was expecting to come back. Then: “you coming?” 

Shiro leads him to the training deck, and they spar until Keith loses all sense of time and anxiety. He focuses on the movement, the way he can throw his body at Shiro again and again; it feels productive. Keith will always choose physical exhaustion over mental turmoil. He doesn’t like dwelling on losses that have no fix, and this — his sense of self — is so deep a loss, so wretched at the bone, that he can’t think about it too closely. If he does, he thinks about his father, whose loneliness is clearer now, and he thinks about how the universe is so, so big. 

He thinks so hard that Shiro slips under Keith’s guard and flips Keith over his shoulder, dumping him softly onto a practice mat. This time, Keith stays down.

“As your leader, I should probably tell you to sleep more,” Shiro says. He kneels down beside Keith, and Keith allows himself the luxury of rolling onto his side so he can press against Shiro’s flank. It’s reassuring; it means that Keith is still a person. “But as your friend … I know you’d just tell me I should take my own advice.” 

“I was sleeping,” Keith argues, unconvincingly. “That’s how you found me.”

“You’re not a dog,” Shiro says, and he ruffles his prosthetic through Keith’s sweaty hair. It’s a rough gesture, less practiced than the way Shiro touches Keith’s shoulder. “You deserve better than exiling yourself to a doorway.”

The light in the training deck starts to fade out; it only stays on high-yellow when they move around enough to trigger the battle simulations. In its place, the blue-violet track lighting in the walls and across the floor panels begins to light up. It colors Keith’s bare hands and he clenches his fists a few times, bending his fingers in and out of the glow. His skin looks lavender like this. 

Keith wonders what his life would have been like if he’d been born purple, like his mother presumably is. He wonders if his dad remembered her every time Keith cried or fought or acted odd, and he wonders if his mother wanted him. He can’t quite imagine it: himself, as an alien infant. Probably an accident. Probably some kind of fluke. 

Shiro keeps his hand on the curve of Keith’s skull. He’d been avoiding Keith’s shoulder so he doesn’t irritate the wound, but that doesn’t mean he’s stopped touching Keith. Having Shiro so close feels like wearing armor. 

Shiro falls asleep like that, sitting up on the floor of the training deck, his hand on Keith’s head and Keith tucked against the lee of his hip. Keith follows, like he’ll always follow Shiro. It’s not any more comfortable than the floor outside Shiro’s room — a little less so, even, since the both of them are about due for whatever passes for a shower in space, and they’re in the middle of the floor instead of against a wall. But Keith feels safer this way, the way he felt safer sleeping under the bed on one of the group homes. This is a bulwark. Nothing will come for him here, or now, even if Keith doesn’t have the place here he’d once assumed.

Neither of them sleep well, or for long, but the minutes they steal are the scaffolding that’ll take them through another day. 


End file.
